


No-One Else

by SeekingSelkies



Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Christmas Fluff, First Kiss, Love Confessions, M/M, Mutual Pining, accidentally wrote a christmas fic in june
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-05
Updated: 2019-06-05
Packaged: 2020-04-08 12:35:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19107208
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SeekingSelkies/pseuds/SeekingSelkies
Summary: Found this by accident when I was looking for another fic, because apparently I'm so obsessed with this song it has inspired not one but two fics.Aziraphale finds Crowley after an argument and hears him sing





	No-One Else

**Author's Note:**

> The song is 'No One Else' from Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812, and it is indescribably beautiful. Phillipa Soo's version is my favourite, but there are many beautiful covers now, and it's a very 'Crowley and Aziraphale pining for each other' song. Check it out!
> 
> Unbeta'd because I wrote half of this 3 years ago so I have no idea what past me wanted from this. Hoping it still makes sense

Aziraphale glanced up at the snowflakes fluttering from the pale orange-grey clouds like moulting angels feathers, adjusting his scarf as he stepped out of Grand Central Station. His fingers lingered on the fabric for a moment and he felt a jolt in his stomach as he remembered the day he received it, painfully woven into the task he was about to perform.

***

Several winters after the Apocalypse-That-Wasn’t, Crowley had taken a break from his usual tempting and general interference with the lives of most of Greater London to help Aziraphale set up Christmas decorations. Aziraphale had been very liberal that year, particularly with the holly, hoping that covering most of the doorway to the bookshop with prickly leaves would be a sufficient deterrent to any customers. Crowley was doing his best to assist, hissing threats at the leaves as he pinned them up. Despite very verbal disapproval, Aziraphale had to admit that the decorations looked much more impressive than they had done when he bought them. Still, it wasn’t festive to bully the plants.  
  
“Please stop doing that my dear” he insisted, nearly knocking Crowley over as he bustled past him in quest of a cup of cocoa.  
“Hey!” Crowley protested, turning to glare at him, although there was a smirk of fond amusement that ruined the effect. Aziraphale caught the glare and shrugged, unrelenting in the pursuit of biscuits. Grabbing a book placed conveniently close to the kettle, he began to skim through it.  
  
He was broken out of his reverie several moments later by a cough near the doorway.  
“Hmm” He mumbled in reply, eyes still fixed to the page.  
Another cough, louder this time. Aziraphale raised his head to see Crowley leaning on the doorframe with that familiar expression that was a mixture of affection and exasperation.  
“Were you listening to anything I said, angel?” he asked dryly.  
“What? Of course, my dear boy!” Aziraphale paused. Crowley raised an eyebrow.  
“I _said_ the decorations are all up, and I fully intend to reward myself with dinner. And several drinks. Are you coming?”  
Aziraphales attention had strayed back to the book in his hands, which promptly caught fire. His head shot up to stare at Crowley, aghast. Crowley took several steps towards him and placed one hand on the book, extinguishing it. His fingers moved over Aziraphale’s until he was clasping one hand in his own. It was hard to tell his exact expression behind the sunglasses but there was a certain steely look around his mouth and a flush in his cheeks that suggested he had something to say, and that something made him very uncomfortable indeed.  
  
Instead, he released Aziraphales hand and turned away through the door, headed towards the entrance to the shop. Aziraphales skin tingled where Crowleys fingers had briefly rested on it. Frowning, he followed his friend, wishing he had wrapped up more as he stepped into the sharp December air. Crowley was already sitting in the Bentley, assuming an air of nonchalance Aziraphale could see through from a mile off, let alone from a distance of 300-odd metres. Aware of the demon’s dislike of cold weather, he decided it was prudent not to mention anything until they were safe inside the warmth of a restaurant. Instead he opted for worrying on his lip and staring out of the window for the entire drive, admiring the swirls of frost on the patches of pavement that had managed to escape the sun.  
  
They pulled up in front of the restaurant, neither angel nor demon saying as a word as they walked in. Crowley tried to subtly influence the waiter to give them his favourite table in the corner of the room without Aziraphale noticing.  
  
He failed.  
  
With an apologetic smile, Aziraphale requested a table for two - _any_ table- and ushered Crowley through the restaurant, much to his friend’s annoyance. The restaurant was quiet, and Aziraphale felt obliged to fill the silence with chatter about the beauty of Christmas – even if it was at completely the wrong time of year, but that was beside the point – while Crowley glanced around the restaurant looking both bored and irritated by turns. Now and then he flicked his head back towards Aziraphale before continuing to scan the room with an almost imperceptible shake of the head.

“Tell me you are not seeking out your next victim while we’re having dinner, Crowley.” Aziraphale cut through his own speech to interrupt Crowley’s reverie.  
“Victim?” Crowley echoed in confusion. “No. I was thinking.” His brow furrowed, his eyebrows dipping below his sunglasses.  
“Well, you were the one who was so insistent to come out for dinner and you haven’t spoken a word since we stepped through the doors”. Aziraphale remarked.  
“Well” Crowley laughed softly. “I don’t think it’s fair for you to complain after the number of times I’ve been callously tossed aside in favour of a book, angel.” He smirked, tipping his glasses down just a fraction so his yellow eyes were visible, glinting.  
“I do not!” Aziraphale spluttered, his indignant outburst causing him to almost choke on his wine, before he remembered that angels don’t breathe so there wasn’t much of a risk to him anyway, and settled down. Crowley watched this scene unfold with one eyebrow raised.  
“I didn’t hear a word from you for the entirety of ****, and the second you put the book down you ran straight off to Paris to fawn over Victor”  
“Angels don’t _fawn_ ”  
“I seem to recall it being in the job description, actually” Crowley took another sip of wine, staring at a distant spot of the restaurant. He paused, frowning at the bottom of the empty glass. A waiter promptly appeared to refill it, not quite out of nowhere, since Nowhere has no restaurants or waiters whatsoever, and consistently earns a score of 0 on TripAdvisor.  
“It changed literature, Crowley”  
“I helped invent the Parisian sewers, I rather resent seeing pages worth of description devoted to them, it was almost _reverent._ ” Crowley wrinkled his nose in disgust. “And don’t get me started on Tolstoy” he added, taking another gulp of wine as if to wash the name from his mouth.  
“Ah, Leo” Aziraphale sighed, thinking of the handsome copy of War and Peace nestled out of the eyes of prying customers in the corner of his shop.  
“Those books nearly put me to sleep for another century.”  
“I think Sloth would sue you for stepping on her territory”  
“Oh she would” Crowley grinned, and Aziraphale could sense the glimmer in his eyes, even though he couldn’t see it.

Until he could. Crowley’s glasses had miraculously disappeared – had he done that? Or had Crowley? – and there was that look again, flushed cheeks and all. He opened his mouth, abruptly closed it again, and then-

“I got you a present” he said slowly, reaching beneath his chair and pulling out an elegantly wrapped bundle, passing it to Aziraphale.

A thrill went through his body, tempered with a deep feeling of panic he couldn’t quell.  
  
“A present? You’re a demon, Crowley. Demons don’t _do_ presents”  
“Well, I just, I saw it, and I thought you’d love it, and I-I must have drunk too much mulled wine and I haggled with the man behind the counter so really I completely underpaid him for it so it wasn’t exactly a nice gesture, and just, open it, would you?”

Aziraphale delicately picked at the edge of the wrapping paper, pulling out a deep red and green tartan scarf, as long as he was tall. It was the softest thing he had ever touched. He looked up at Crowley, eyes shining. Crowley fiddled with his sunglasses.

“Thank you”  
  
“’s’nothing, I just…” Crowley flushed an even deeper shade of red, right to the tips of his ears.  
  
“I didn’t get you anything” Aziraphale said sheepishly.  
  
“You didn’t have to. I wanted to get it, and I-“

The feeling of panic rushed back, cascading over Aziraphale like snow falling off a roof. The apocalypse may have been averted, but he still felt heaven watching them, like a label you’ve forgotten to take out of your brand new coat, and they had made their feelings about Crowley abundantly clear.

“Whatever you’re about to say, don’t. Please” he begged.

The colour drained from Crowley’s face, his expression slamming shut. Patrons of the restaurant found their drinks freezing over as the temperature of the room plunged below zero. Tears welled in Aziraphale’s eyes. He blinked them away vigorously, staring at the table.

“I can’t fall, Crowley” he whispered softly. He rose his eyes to look at Crowley again. His face was blank, as if his friend had just packed up his entire personality and left, leaving nothing but the exterior. Crowley stood, his glasses rematerializing on his face, and walked out of the restaurant without another word.

By the time Aziraphale had summoned the presence of mind, and body, to chase after him, the flat was already empty, save for a single dried leaf crumpled in one corner.  
  
***

Aziraphale re-adjusted his scarf as he walked through the doors of the apartment block. He was rather pleased to discover that there was no doorman present, the handful of American films Crowley had convinced him to watch over the years had led him to believe that a doorman was a prerequisite to living in New York. Any other day Aziraphale would have calmly explained that he was there to visit a friend, flashed a benevolent smile and been on his way. Today he stuffed his hands in the pocket of his coat to disguise the shaking, pulling out the well-worn scrap of paper hidden within the folds of fabric and checking, once again, for the address.  
  
After what felt like a year in the elevator, Aziraphale wished for a second he had just flown, before reminding himself that he would have been seen, and probably would have knocked on the wrong window anyway. His footsteps echoed along the hallway as he approached the door of Apartment 66, hand trembling in the most treacherous way as he knocked.

“Calm down, Aziraphale” he muttered.  
  
****  
Aziraphale crept across the living room, resolving to remain there until Crowley returned – _if_ he returned, although the stack of newspapers outside the door seemed to suggest otherwise – when the faint sound of music reached his ears. He wandered towards the source, finding himself at the top of a small flight of stairs leading down to a door of the same glossy black as the rest of the furniture. The stairs made no sound as he stepped down them, and he hovered for a moment with his hand poised over the doorknob, listening to the muffled sounds of a piano on the other side of the door. Cautiously, he tried the handle, and pushed the door open.  
  
Had he not been otherwise distracted for the first time in his life, Aziraphale would have been at liberty to notice the shelves of books replacing every wall of the room he had stepped into. If he wasn’t preoccupied, his eyes may have rested on some of the titles, first editions of every American novel worth reading since the birth of the Constitution. Naturally, many of these also resided in his shop, carefully guarded, but if his eyes had strayed from the scene in the centre of the room he would have noticed one shelf in particular, devoted entirely to books he had often expressed a wish to acquire, and had indeed spent the past decade trying to chase down.  
  
Aziraphale noticed none of these things.  
  
Instead he found himself as frozen as the frost lining the window, watching his oldest friend who was currently sat with his back to Aziraphale, hands gently brushing the piano keys in a melody that mimicked the snowflakes outside. Then Crowley sang.  
  
_We’ve done this all before  
We were angels once  
Don’t you remember?  
Joy and life inside our souls  
And nobody knows  
Just you and me  
It's our secret  
  
_Despite having no need to breathe, Aziraphale nevertheless found himself compelled to focus on that very action, anything to distract himself from the alien feeling that had settled over the room. The song was so very _un-Crowley._ Beautiful as it was, and knowing his friends weakness for good music, he was surprised. Aziraphale had heard Crowley sing, many times over many years, but it was almost always drunken, or otherwise played off as a joke, but he hadn’t sung like this since…  
  
His heart fell as Crowley continued, a sense of gentle heartbreak filling the room with every note. The lyrics were lost as Aziraphale remained there, transfixed, unaware that there were tears catching in his eyelashes until it occurred to him to blink – out of habit rather than necessity – watching Crowley’s pale fingers slide across the keys, their touch light despite the weight beneath his voice.  
  
_Maybe he’ll come today  
Maybe he came already  
And he’s sitting in the drawing room  
And I simply forgot  
  
_As the song drew to a close, Aziraphale must have moved, or drawn breath, because something caused Crowley to leap away from his seat, scuttle behind the grand piano and pause, both hands placed flat on the piano lid. His sunglasses had been banished – when had he done that? – and he regarded Aziraphale with a look that was anger, misery and confusion all at once. The misery caught Aziraphale’s attention first, causing him to overlook the glint of joy at the edges of those golden irises, and the hope that had flashed, just for a moment, in the centre of his eyes.  
  
“What do you want, angel?” Crowley asked eventually, his voice thick. Aziraphale found himself at a loss, having rehearsed a hundred speeches on his way over, he couldn’t remember a single one.  
“I wanted my friend back” he swallowed, half-resolved to turn around and run out of the door and across the hallway. Crowley’s eyes hardened.  
“I’m not your friend”  
Aziraphale blinked  
“I’m sorry. Christmas…I should have listened”  
Crowley snorted, eyes turning towards the window, the cold daylight just seeping around the edges of the curtains. His jaw was set, but Aziraphale’s gaze was zoned in on his eyes, the soft look of sadness like melting snow.  
  
He abandoned his speeches.  
  
It felt like a heartbeat, the time it took to make it across the room. In reality it was a series of tiny flutters, cautious footsteps that brought him around the piano and straight into Crowley’s line of vision. He saw the reticence in his friends face, the fear that had infused his body as Aziraphale stepped closer, and he was half-resolved to turn back and fly to London as fast as his wings would manage. Human methods of transport would never be quick enough to get him away fast as he needed if he was wrong about his.  
  
“Angel” Crowley’s voice was a whisper, a warning. Aziraphale didn’t reply, rising slightly on the tips of his toes to reach him, the stubborn bastard refused to make things easier. But then again, hadn’t Aziraphale made things hard enough for him? He pressed his lips to the demons cheek, pulling his face back slowly. Crowley’s eyelashes fluttered for a moment, his eyes flicking down to Aziraphale’s lips for just a fraction of a second before he leant down to kiss him back.  
  
The kiss was desperate and tender, all at once. _I’m sorry_ Aziraphale’s kiss said, _I was a coward._  
  
_I missed you._

Crowley spun them around, pinning Aziraphale to the wall behind the piano, clutching the edges of Aziraphale’s scarf like they’d fall off the earth if he didn’t hold him as tightly as possible.

Angels and demons don’t need to breathe. But they do need to talk about their feelings. Aziraphale broke away first, drinking in every inch of Crowley’s face. There was a faint shadow of stubble. That was new.

“I love you” Aziraphale whispered.  
Crowley blinked  
“Do you, do you mean that?” his eyes scanned Aziraphale’s, searching for the tiniest hint of artifice or doubt. He nodded.  
“You were right, angel. I can’t let you fall for me”  
Aziraphale laughed, pressing his forehead to Crowley’s.  
“It’s far too late for that my dear”  
Crowley’s expression shifted to horror.  
“You haven’t…”  
“Become a demon?” he laughed again “No. No. You’re too good for me for that”

Crowley’s shoulders sagged with relief, and Aziraphale pulled him in for another kiss, church bells ringing across the city as another Christmas began.


End file.
